


dream sequence

by ell (amywaited)



Series: fleeting [2]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Cute, Flower Crowns, Fluff, Happy, M/M, Picnic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 03:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18044900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amywaited/pseuds/ell
Summary: tony never expected to get here, bathed in golden light, living a life he never dreamed about and feeling the things he had never felt.





	dream sequence

**Author's Note:**

> my friend [kait](https://starksnack.tumblr.com) sent me this on tumblr: _Fic idea for you. I have a revolutionary idea. Okay? You ready? So get this. Our two beautiful boyos, Anthony Edward Stark and James Buchanan Barnes, going for a picnic. Sounds crazy? I know right. But wait, there’s more. So they have their picnic right, and then (this is the good part) and then, they find flowers to braid each other flower crowns. Boom. There’s the idea. I know right? _. so i decided to run with it. enjoy.__

Tony never really expected to get here.

Which isn’t to say he isn’t enjoying being here. Sitting on damp grass, eating dry sandwiches and squishy cherries with James will never be something he doesn’t enjoy. It’s just… somewhat unexpected. Unanticipated. In all of the childhood dreams that Tony has locked up and thrown away the key, this was never the one he pictured unlocking again.

This was never really the one he pictured actually coming true.

In some wild, grand scheme of things, this is probably the one he’s most glad came true. In some ways, James is the childhood dream he never had and that thought makes his brain want to curl in on itself, because for all the childhood dreams he had and didn’t have, James is one of the best.

James, who is smiling at him with cherry stained lips and sun stained skin and an ethereal beauty that Tony thinks he doesn’t deserve, says, “Penny for your thoughts?” 

“Oh,” Tony says, “you wouldn't want to hear them.”

“I want to hear anything you say,” James says, soft and honest and earnest in a way that Tony couldn’t make up even if he tried to.

James is something that exists outside of imaginations, Tony thinks, because imaginations can only do him so much justice. Looking at him is like looking at a high definition picture in a low definition world. James is unlike anything that has ever existed before, Tony is sure of it, and he keeps expecting error messages to appear, and his save file to be corrupted, and he keeps waiting for the moment when James reveals himself to be a dream because that’s more than Tony deserves and more than he’ll ever get.

Because James is tantalizingly real, in a way that Tony has never seen before, in a way that Tony will never see again. 

“You don’t want to hear this,” he says.

“Yeah, I do,” James says, in the way that only he can, in the way that makes Tony want to tear himself open and let James take and take and take until he has nothing left to give, in the way that could ruin lives and in the way that could make them.

Tony blinks slowly, because the sun is melting through his eyelids and painting them both yellow gold. “I was thinking about how I keep expecting you to disappear.”

James frowns and the sun paints light across his cheeks. “Why do you think I’m going to disappear?”

“Because you’re the sort of person who only exists in fairy tales, darling,” Tony says. “I keep expecting the angels to call you home any second.”

“And you think I don’t expect the same of you?”

Tony shrugs, “I don’t know why you would.”

“Because you’re someone who only exists in dreams,” James says, and Tony feels for all the world like they’re speaking each other’s language. “You only exist in what if’s and could be’s, in a plane far above this because we will never be worthy of you.”

Tony breathes out a laugh. “We all want what we can’t have.” He leans back, curling his fingers through the grass.

“I’m just glad I got what I wanted,” James says. “The sky is never complete without its stars.”

Tony lets himself breath, plucking a squashed daisy from the grass and twirling it betwixt his fingers. “Come here,” he says into the wind.

He’s never told the stars themselves what to do before, but James moves to place his head in Tony’s lap anyway. His hair falls over Tony’s legs, spilling engine oil over his thighs. 

There are things that are beautiful, Tony thinks, twisting lackluster daisies through James’s hair. There will always be things that are beautiful so long as there are always people who see that particular beauty, and he finds himself somehow comforted by that, in a way that perhaps he never has been before.

His heart feels at rest, his soul at peace. Staring down at James with his halo of flowers, the sun painting golden light in the places it is most deserving, he feels at home.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading. let me know what u thought, if ur feeling especially kind and wonderful.
> 
> ill see you next time. loving you always, ell.


End file.
